Portland Hotel’s Black Guest Threatened with Jail for Talking to His Mom

Next Post

Press {{ keys }} + D to make this page bookmarked.

Close

Photo: rawstory.com/PrtSc

Portland Hotel’s Black Guest Threatened with Jail for Talking to His Mom

8:00
December 26, 2018

1449

Another black person has suffered from white employees stupidity. Jermaine Massey, 34, was unfortunate enough to call his mom to find out if she was alright – by doing that, he immediately became “a threat to other people’s safety” and had to choose between staying at the hotel to be later thrown to jail or being kicked out of the hotel and having to find a new one around midnight… The man seems to be holding in his tears while telling the story of having been “racially profiled.”

Christmas holidays are possibly the best time for white people to call the police on black people for doing next-to-nothing, which is exactly what happened in Portland, Oregon. Again.

Experience has shown that such cases usually play out according to the same idiotic scenario. Let’s go through the steps.

Step #1: Getting suspicious of black people living their lives

Jermaine Massey had just returned to DoubleTree Hotel in the Lloyd District – where he was staying on his first visit to Portland – from a concert at the Moda Center on Sunday night when he saw a missed call from his mother.

The man assumed something must be wrong if she called so late given that she lives on the East Coast and sat down in the lobby of the hotel to take the call before going up to his room to see if she was alright.

According to what Massey said in his now-viral videos, while he was on the phone with his mother, a security guard whose name tag read “Earl” approached him and interrupted his phone call to ask if Massey was a guest at the hotel.

Having received a positive reply, the guard decided that wasn’t enough for “everyone’s security” so he kept pressing and asked what his room number was (just like Ohio Bank tellers who refused to cash the paycheck of a black man because didn’t believe “he could earn that much”).

According to Massey, that is when he became irritated and told the guard that he was on the phone and that he doesn’t remember his room number off the top of his head. Please be patient, as here’s the beginning of

Apparently, not being able to recall his room number was a trigger for the guard who had a manager call the police, in spite of Massey holding his room key card.

The manager, Massey said, asked him and the guard what had happened only after complying with the guard’s request and calling police. He also told him to “calm down” and that the guard had the right to alert police and wouldn’t have done so without cause.

According to one of Massey’s posts detailing the event, the guard told him he was “a safety threat” and had caused a “disturbance.”

Massey, who was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with bright lettering, jeans and sneakers, contended that the white guests who were walking in and out of the hotel and milling about the lobby were not stopped. Several times, he suggests that he was singled out because he was black, to which neither the manager nor guard respond, the Oregonian reported.

When officers arrived, he was asked to remove his belongings from his room and told that if he didn’t he “would be considered a trespasser and would be thrown in jail.”

In his post, Massey said he complied and was allowed to check out at the front desk while police waited — and was not given a refund.

An officer told Massey outside the hotel that he had no way of knowing if the incident was fueled by racism, but that Massey should follow up with his complaints with hotel management so he wouldn’t have to be arrested for trespassing.

Massey then declined a ride to another hotel and took a Lyft to the Sheraton near the airport, according to the videos.

“It just goes to show you that racism is still alive and well man,” Massey said from his room at the Sheraton that night. “This was a real incident where I could’ve gone to jail if I responded in a different way.”

A post shared by m a i n e (@mymainereason) on Dec 23, 2018 at 2:04am PST

After Massey posted videos and tweets about the incident on several social media platforms, many called for the security guard and manager to be fired. Several people picked up the hashtag #HotelEarl after the name on the security guard’s badge. They, and Massey, draw parallels between his experience and similar incidents where people of color have had the cops called for political canvassing, renting an Airbnb, or having a barbecue.

Shame on #hotelearl. DoubleTree Lloyd Center should be embarrassed & apologetic. I’ve ‘loitered’ in hotel lobbies ???? times that I have both stayed at and visited, and never questioned. PDX should be better than that. Everyone should feel as welcome as everyone else. We failed.

The report noted that Paul Peralta, the general manager of the Portland DoubleTree where the incident occurred, reached out to Massey to “amend” the situation.

“Safety and security of our guests and associates is our top priority at the Doubletree by Hilton Portland,” Peralta said in a statement. “This unfortunate incident is likely the result of a misunderstanding between our hotel and guest. We are sorry that this matter ended the way it did. We are place of public accommodation and do not discriminate against any individuals or groups.”

Massey, however, said in his posts that what happened to him at the DoubleTree was racial profiling and discrimination.

“I plan to try to seek justice and make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else,” he said in one of his videos.